When the Devil Asks You Questions

The Word becomes your only weapon

Last night I had a dream about the devil. Not the cartoon with a pitchfork, but the real deal. The Guardian Cherubim. The right hand who fell. Here’s what keeps rattling in my skull: he asked me questions.

Dreams are unfathomable. We spend a third of our lives in this surreal state, every human experiences them, yet collectively we know nothing. Maybe dreams are the back door bypassing our rational minds, where the supernatural speaks to the soul without flesh throwing up roadblocks. A divine hotline requiring no material authentication.

Scripture gives breadcrumbs but no map. Jacob’s ladder. Peter’s vision of animals. The angel visiting Joseph about Mary. Pharaoh’s nightmares. The Lord uses dreams as warnings and guidance, which means the door swings both ways. If God has access, so does the enemy.

Paul tells us the peace of God “transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:6-7). Those four words should tell us everything about how little we actually know. We’re under attack day and night, but we’re also ministered to. This is why John the mystic warns us to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1). So let me tell you what happened when I tested one.

The dream started in a warehouse, all industrial machinery and crates stacked like a child’s blocks. Dark, except for this oozing red light at one end that looked like something bleeding through the wall. A voice cut through: “You know me.” I couldn’t see the source but the red light was disturbed by a shadow, shapes forming into a silhouette. A goat. Sharp, jagged horns. The voice again: “Who do you say I am?”

You are the devil.

The goat grew large and suddenly I was somewhere else. A hallway with lockers, the kind you’d find in any high school, except at the end stood the goat. “What is my story?”

I spoke Ezekiel 28 like I was reading from the page. The Guardian Cherubim. The anointed one who walked among the stones of fire. The fall. The rebellion. Genesis 6 and the sons of God. The coming of Christ. With each word, the environment shifted into something more menacing. Picture this: hold your arms in front of you, palms facing you, then slowly bring your hands toward your eyes. That’s what being pursued by the devil felt like. A creeping evil manifesting its hatred through the architecture of fear itself.

I told the devil his story and it ended where it always ends. The second coming. The white horse. The Lion of Judah throwing the enemy into eternal torment. Not to kill him, not to end him, but to deny him from all the Father deemed good. Forever.

Then I woke up. No panic. No cold sweat. Just this strange calm. I had fought a good fight. Being locked in a one-on-one with the enemy is rare. His usual tactics are subtler - distraction, doubt, whispered lies that sound suspiciously like your own voice during the daytime grind. But in his attempt to mimic Jesus, asking me questions like Christ asked Peter, he stepped onto ground where my stance was firm. I was willing to put on the gloves and fight the devil with the Word.

Here’s what gets me. We spend so much energy trying to explain God away. We want three meals a day and someone to blame for bad weather, not the fulfillment of the Spirit. This carnal demand extends into our intellectualism where we lust for our crown of knowing, of being the smartest in the kingdom of “getting it.”

We approach theologies for comfort. Jehovah’s Witnesses are so comfortable their evangelism puts most churches to shame. When’s the last time you saw Baptist or Catholic outreach with the same consistency as a JW stand? Theology becomes an idol. Worse than laziness, it becomes self-centered. “I subscribe to this theology because it makes me feel better.” That’s every religion playing dress-up with truth. The discomfort of not knowing is so unbearable we accept paper armor and paper crowns just to feel protected.

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). The Lord states that “his understanding is unsearchable” (Isaiah 40:28b), yet we can’t help ourselves. “It’s all predetermined.” “It’s all my choice, but only this one way will save me.” “God can’t save me, but she can, if I pray to her enough.”

Why can’t we just allow God to be who He says He is? To accept that He cares about what we do and is doing all within the law of this world to encourage us? He speaks to us in dreams. He speaks through His Word. The world is ruled by the Prince of Darkness, yes, but Christ has already won.

I fought the devil with the words of the Old Testament while wielding the authority of Jesus Christ. My theology from that experience? I’m worth the devil’s time. For a being with such limited time remaining, there has to be something in the mortal soul that makes this war of attrition worth fighting the way they do. The devil and all his agents are against us. They hide in idols we choose to worship because the discomfort of being exiled from heaven is too much to bear.

We all bear that weight, whether we acknowledge it or not. We’re all exiled from Eden, trying to find our way back home with nothing but a book, a Spirit, and the uncomfortable knowledge that we’re simultaneously more loved and more opposed than we could ever imagine.

The enemy will ask you questions. Make sure you know the answers.

Let us pray.